Child star killed in Nepal air crash

World / 15 May 2012, 2:58pm

Unidentified survivor of a plane crash is carried for treatment to a nearby city of Pokhara, Nepal, Monday, May 14, 2012. A plane crashed into a mountain in the Himalayas while trying to land at an airport in northern Nepal on Monday, killing 15 people and critically injuring six. (AP Photo/Bharat Koirala)

Leading Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan paid tribute on Tuesday to a child actress and one-time co-star who was among 15

people killed in a plane crash in Nepal.

Taruni Sachdev, 14, was travelling with her sister and mother on an Agni Air flight on Monday which plunged into a hillside after aborting a landing at the high-altitude airport of Jomsom.

All three of them were killed, along with 12 others. Six people made a miraculous escape, including two Danish travellers.

“Shocked and very saddened to hear about the Nepal plane crash. Lost one of my cutest co-stars. Little Taruni Sachdev from Paa. Speechless,” Bachchan wrote on Twitter, referring to the 2009 hit film “Paa”.

The Hindustan Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that Sachdev, from Bollywood capital Mumbai, was a prominent child artist who had featured in nearly 50 advertisements and films.

Among the survivors of Monday's crash were two Indian girls aged six and nine as well as their father, but their mother was reported to have died.

“We are in a state of shock, and distraught that these two little girls will have a life without their mother,” K. Srinivasan, uncle of the two girls, told the Hindustan Times.

The family was part of a group of Indian pilgrims who were on their way to the holy shrine of Muktinath in the Himalayas.

Rajendra Singh Bhandari, a regional police spokesman, told AFP that the two Danes had been sent to the capital Kathmandu by ambulance for further treatment.

“All three Indian survivors are being treated in (nearby) Pokhara town. The doctors have said that they are out of danger,” Bhandari said.

Another survivor, a Nepali air hostess, was airlifted to Kathmandu on Monday.

The Nepal government has formed a five-member commission to investigate the cause of the crash. The commission, headed by a former director of Nepal's civil aviation authority, will submit its report in three months. - Sapa-AFP